


into the wreck

by klickitats



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types
Genre: F/F, Grey Wardens, Hawke Wasn't Great, Rebuilding Kirkwall, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-01
Updated: 2016-08-01
Packaged: 2018-07-28 16:41:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7648564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/klickitats/pseuds/klickitats
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bethany is the last Hawke Aveline expected to show up in Kirkwall in the middle of the night.</p>
            </blockquote>





	into the wreck

**Author's Note:**

> "Can you please stop writing femslash with Adrienne Rich epigraphs?" NOT ON YOUR LIFE

_I came to explore the wreck._

_The words are purposes._

_The words are maps._

_I came to see the damage that was done_

_and the treasures that prevail._

\--Adrienne Rich, “Diving into the Wreck”

* * *

 

Slaughter held little meaning to Aveline after a point. Blood was blood, whether a person’s heart pumped it in and out, or it leaked all over the ground. Ostagar wasn’t the first, but it was certainly the most gruesome after a series of unobtrusive skirmishes, a mummer’s horror show that left her slipping in the sludge in her haste to retreat. Then there was the slow creeping of darkspawn that took Lothering, and then the quick cut of her own sword that took her husband. Her sense of foresight grew strong as a well-used muscle. It wasn’t apathy. It wasn’t agreement. Life should be protected, spared, held close. But catastrophe held no power over Aveline any longer. It had lost its ability to surprise her.

It was this fact that served her better than her strong arms or her fastidious discipline during the weeks following the Chantry ruin. The claws of the tragedy took little time in working their way into the populace. Soldiers and peasants alike walked around in a daze, pulling stones from the rubble until they found wayward hands and arms, scraps of clothing, razed artifacts. Even Aveline caught her guards on their knees, cradling one piecemeal bit or another, dazed in their own horror before catching themselves and going on. As the days crawled by, everyone adjusted to the carnage. There was nothing else to do.

Aveline, in charge of whatever city guard still left standing after the explosion and the battle, was left to her own devices. Bran assumed the role of Viscount in the interim to reestablish civilization’s grip on the city; Varric returned to his room at the Hanged Man. The latter helped to balance the scales more than anything else. She meant to corner him there, to demand where Hawke and his mage had made their destination, to shake him by the shoulders until something, anything resembling a solution fell out of his endless pockets. But there was no time, and nothing to do with the answer once she found it. Aveline refused to trek down useless paths. Three weeks after the cracking of Kirkwall, and nothing was done, nothing was sealed. Nothing to stop them from dissolving into the shit-ridden sea.

She walked the patrols herself. She had always made a habit of it, refusing to be kept behind a desk, but as their numbers dwindled and unrest increased, she took to the standard beats around the docks. The alienage, strangely enough, went untouched. Merrill’s work, perhaps, weaving safety out of bloodshed. The thought would have disturbed her before the decimation of the Chantry and the Circle. Now, she simply crossed it off the list of areas that needed constant vigilance, and made a note to visit Merrill soon. Perhaps some resources could be leveraged to help. But Aveline would not be surprised to see the aliena operating just as before--perhaps even better, now that the eyes of the city were permanently distracted.

She only put aside what could take care of itself: the alienage, the Carta, the templars who barely numbered a quarter of what they were before. She shaved her head to the scalp. She ate only when she remembered, and slept at her desk. Everything else waited.

So--tonight she walked the the docks, flanked by Guard Shella, a half-elf with a keen eye for defense and a crooked nose, and Guard Georg, who possessed the wits of a chamberpot but could club a ruffian twenty feet back or more on a good day. The usual tools, as Varric would say, for the usual job. (Aveline had long ago divested the city guard of the antiquated “guardsman” and “guardswoman.” She simply didn’t have the time to form the additional syllables required. There was a war on, after all. The distinctions were at best formal, and at worst incredibly stupid.)

Of course, there was the mabari, a burly little hamhock Hawke called Fellow. Hawke hadn’t taken him, and he found out quickly that if he stuck to Aveline’s side like a rogue burr, someone would throw him a scrap of bread eventually. Or perhaps it was a misplaced sense of patriotism. Either way, she didn’t turn down the help.

There was no reason for them to be tripped up by Carta muscle, other than the poison gas. Hawke had let the green stuff fall into the hands of the black market, and Aveline suspected they’d be paying for it for years. Not that it helped, nearly on her knees in the street, face wet with acid tears, Fellow howling beside her, and Guard Georg already unconscious on the ground. Guard Shella swung her greatsword blindly through the air-- _swoop, swoop, swoop_. The sound of laughter from their attackers, raspy and amused, the sound of leaves curling under the heat of a forest fire. She opened her mouth to call out and the poison rasped at her tongue. It burned the inside of her mouth, crawled in her ears, and flayed each follicle on her head with a prickly fire. She lashed out with her sword, carving a body from navel to neck and a spray of blood landed on her face. She rubbed at it instinctively with the back of her hand--an amateur mistake, a tired mistake--and only made the fire scratching at her eyes worse.

A high, hard gust of wind then, an unintelligible yell. Fellow howled like a banshee and pitched forward, knocking Aveline to the ground in his haste. Or maybe to remove her from harm’s way--mabari possessed an odd and occasionally useful set of instincts. A whirl of lightning, a crack of bone, and then silence.

Aveline rolled forward, using her shield to stagger up to her feet. Georg lay prone on the cobbles, surrounded by the tattered bodies of their attackers. Shella stuck her greatsword in the dirt and leaned on it like an old woman. A wind blew again, taking the last of the poison smoke. Her eyes still burned, but they opened, tears dripping from the corners.

In the center of the street, a woman bent at the waist, rubbing a particular spot under Fellow’s chin. She wrinkled her nose in worry. Black hair, shorn to just below her ears, deep brown skin and wide hazel eyes. All the same, despite the blue and silver, and the staff that grew from her hand like giant thorn.

“Brother didn’t take the dog,” she said.

“Bethany,” said Aveline.

~~~

She insisted on dragging Aveline and her two comrades back to the keep and assigned clean-up and a new patrol. Aveline had protested--not on account of her two guards, but on behalf of herself. She could easily continue the night’s watch for the rest of her rotation.

“I’m sure we can speak in the morning,” Aveline said for the third time as Bethany opened the door to their headquarters.

“The captain hasn’t slept in three days,” muttered Guard Shella, supporting Guard Georg on her shoulder. Aveline made a note to assign her to cleaning the blood from the old chestplates in the armory on her next shift, watched her trip over a cobblestone to nearly send the two of them face-first into the street, sighed, and repented the punishment.

Bethany’s eyes glittered. “Nothing’s changed, then?”

“Well,” offered Aveline, with a roll of her shoulder, “the landscape.”

A short silence, before she saw Bethany hide a smile. “Kirkwall wasn’t quite known for its skyline, was it?”

“Your memory certainly serves,” Aveline said.

Georg and Shella limped off to the infirmary as Aveline assigned a pair of axe-wielding half-elves to the streets, and blearily rubbed her eyes at her desk chair.

“Aveline,” said Bethany from the corner. She started--she’d nearly forgotten she was there. “I heard you had the key to my home.”

She didn’t think twice about it, and unlocked one of her drawers. The key was obnoxiously long, and shined till the bronze gleamed in the candlelight of the office by whoever held it last. Varric, perhaps, but probably Orana.

Bethany hesitated, her eyes resting on the bronze in Aveline’s outstretched palm. For a moment, she couldn’t tell if Bethany was considering the key or the flesh of her hand, or both.

“I’m sure we can speak in--”

“I can’t abandon you to your washbasin,” Bethany told her, dragging her out of the keep by the elbow. “Not with a face like that.”

~~~

The manor sat, an immovable curmudgeon, and waited for them. They had walked mostly in silence--mostly in Aveline’s sniffling, and the sound of her rubbing her eyes. And Fellow, huffing and puffing and slobbering behind them. Bethany struggled a little with the key before opening the door, and then all of a sudden they were inside.

It was a crypt. Aveline didn’t have another word for it. Everything had been covered in linen and velvet to preserve it--Varric’s doing, she wagered. No one else left in Kirkwall would have spared a thought to the furniture. But a fine layer of dust had already settled on the covers. The smell of nice things rotting slow. How it had smelled when they first broke it open, like an old crate filled with treasure. Hawke had carefully gone from room to room to take inventory of every speck of dust.

They arrived at just the correct moment. Soon, worms of all kinds would visit to pay their respects. Termites, roaches, mice and vermin. Thieves, scratching at the windows. Squatters in need of a roof. Not even Varric had power over the truly desperate. Wrapping it all in a shroud only painted the coffin.

The line of thought made her press her fingertips to the bridge of her nose. She had eaten here, once. Drank her first cup of wine in years at Varric’s insistence. Leandra insisted on repairing her trousers, embroidered her a silk handkerchief with loaves of bread along the edges. (She insisted upon making it, and then refused all instruction as to what Aveline desired along the border. No swords, shields, gauntlets, helmets.

Where was that handkerchief now? It made the pit of her stomach drop. She didn’t know. Hadn’t for years.)

Bethany stood in the foyer, hands clasped in front of her, squinting. Her gloves were a deep blue, nearly black, and made of leather. Years old and well-worn to a butter softness. Aveline turned and went to the fireplace, where a few logs still sat in the hearth. Orana had always kept the flint and steel on the mantle, and there it was, waiting.

“No,” she said suddenly, and Aveline stopped. “Not here. Is there--somewhere smaller?”

The tension in her voice wavered, self-conscious. Her house, Aveline thought, and she doesn’t know a single room in it. She cast a glance at the high ceilings, the magnificent staircase, the wide walls. Stretched in permanent yawn. It was too empty, the foyer. Too big, and too little.

“Library’s this way,” she said, nodding over her shoulder, and taking the flint and steel. When they closed themselves inside, she watched Bethany’s shoulders loosen, as though her body knew what Aveline had committed to memory--the Hawkes never spent time in the windowless library, with soot-stains so high on the walls even Orana had never managed to clean them. Leandra had asked Hawke over and over to find the time, to persuade Anders to do it with magic, and he never had. After she passed, they had closed the room for good.

Aveline didn’t know what to make of it. But Bethany bent and scratched behind Fellow’s ears once more, and the tension slipped out of the room to join all the other ghosts gathering in the corners of the manor.

She knelt and made the fire, listened to Bethany rummage around the room. Fellow flopped down in front of the warmth. Kirkwall nights ran cold, and the manor wheezed with chilly drafts.

When she got to her feet, Bethany had a bowl of water--something decorative, vaguely expensive, and perhaps a hundred years old--and a cloth. She patted an armchair. “Let me get a closer look at your face.”

“I don’t remember you healing,” Aveline said, even as her feet moved.

“I know my way around a bit of elfroot.” She looked Aveline up and down, and pulled off those blue-black gloves. “You ought to take your armor off, first.”

Aveline glanced down. “Why?”

“You’ll ruin the furniture,” said Bethany. “And it looks like it hasn’t been off you in days. Here--I’ll help.”

And then her fingers, careful and quick, unraveled the leather stays of Aveline’s pauldron. She stared at the crown of her dark hair, dumbfounded, before saying flatly, “I’m fine on my own, thanks.”

Bethany did not stop, and then the pauldron was in her hands. She set it carefully on a nearby end-table. “I don’t mind,” she said. Aveline pulled away, but instead of letting her go, Bethany wrapped a hand around her arm and held strong. “Don’t think of it as an offer, if it troubles you.”

The touch made Aveline’s mind hush so quickly she thought Bethany had cast a spell, pressed a bit of magic into her skin. But it wasn’t. Aveline couldn’t remember the last time someone had touched her flesh who wasn’t also trying to stick a knife in her belly, or throw her to the ground. The muscle beneath Bethany’s fingers tensed, firm as rock; she did not let go. But her eyes widened a little.

It was the most particular touch--Aveline knew if she pulled again, Bethany would release her. Bethany’s brown fingers were blushingly warm, well-callused from the staff. A lax grip, but strong hands. Even against Aveline they would put up a fight. But that wasn’t the most remarkable thing. The touch asked, _what do you want?_

A question gone unasked for a long, long time. Or propped up in her brain, perhaps, as a meager way of coping with the fact it couldn’t be said. _I want to follow Hawke. I want to stay behind in Kirkwall. I want to defend the city._ Without alternative, there was no means to understand the difference between what was true, and what was necessary.

“Aveline?” said Bethany, a careful note in her voice.

Aveline shook her head. “It’s fine,” she finally muttered, and began loosing the stays of her chestplate.

Once Aveline was in her gambeson and trousers, Bethany instructed her to sit; Aveline obeyed, settling on the edge of an armchair. Bethany drew up a footstool and perched between her legs without asking for permission. She cast a yellow magelight. It glowed above their heads like a star in orbit.

Bethany dabbed a handkerchief in a tincture that smelled of fresh rain, and pressed it to the corner of Aveline’s eye. All was quiet. They had never talked much before the Deep Roads, and all changed. Aveline thought she was a baby mage running out the clock; Bethany had sheltered behind her shield during the hard fights, and nothing more. Hawke came up from the Deep Roads one comrade short, and that had been the end.

“Ah,” she said, and then failed to follow the pause with words. Shit at small talk.

“I hate this place,” Bethany said. She looked up at the tall ceilings arched over them.

Aveline shrugged. “It’s your home,” she told her. “It’s yours either way.”

“Is that how you survive here in Kirkwall?” The corner of Bethany’s lips curled up into an easy smile.

“It’s home enough,” she said with a sigh.

“You like the work.”

“You’re a Warden,” pointed out Aveline. “You’re meant to shovel the shit of everybody else.” She couldn’t help her own amusement. “Thedas’ city guard.”

“Lovely.” Bethany wrung out the cloth in the basin. Rubies rimmed the edge. “The innkeeper in Tantervale said I probably spent my life drinking darkspawn piss.”

A pause as the cloth was pressed against her eyelid. It stung, but a clean sting. “He’s not wrong,” Aveline said.

“He’s not wrong,” she agreed.

~~~

Bethany rinsed the cloth in the ancient bowl one last time, and set it aside. Aveline ran the tips of her fingers over her face. The itch and scratch was gone, and she was grateful.

“Do you mean to stay here?” she asked, glancing at the fire and the dog snoring in front of it.

A longer pause than she expected. “Just a night,” answered Bethany. 

The thought of leaving her alone with the ghosts and the dog made Aveline’s heart wince. “You shouldn’t stay here alone,” she said. “Poachers all over, now. Feeding off the chaos.”

“I suppose two is better than one,” Bethany said, looking over at Fellow. “Even though I’d have the dog.”

“Not if they’ve got sausages,” Aveline told her, and Bethany laughed. “Fellow’s fickle that way.”

“I suppose we all are, after nothing but fish.”

The guard couldn’t even afford fish anymore, Aveline thought. They ate boiled wheat, black bread, and whatever shelled creatures that to the posts at the docks the peasants hadn’t snagged first. “Should we get word to your fellows?” she asked instead.

She shook her head. “They know to expect me in the morning. They’re camped on Sundermount.” Her nose wrinkled, emphasizing the girlishness of her face. Aveline’s mother would have called it a _gemcutter’s nob_ , stolen from Aveline’s favorite book of far-off tales. She couldn’t remember the details of the story, only that it revolved around a cursed woman with a face she could shape at will, and as she grew older and older she carved deeper and deeper, until there was nothing left but bone.

Bethany’s face bore it no resemblance. She had wide eyes that looked suspended in perpetual thought and wonder. She would look young until she was a very old woman. The fact Aveline had only noticed it now meant Bethany had learned to hone it, to use it so it couldn’t be used against her. And now, in private, it was no longer hidden.

“The Dalish,” Bethany began, turning her head to squint at the fire. “Where we found Merrill. They were stranded there, weren’t they?”

Aveline leaned forward, elbows on her knees. “Yes,” she said simply.

“But the mountain is empty now.”

“Yes,” said Aveline again.

This stilled her--a piece of tinder bracing to be lit by flame. The tension returned, a draft from the gap under the door, filling the room with cold.

After a time, those who followed Hawke had stopped talking about him, the way the names of the dead disappeared from the tongue. They never stopped questioning him to his face in the heat of battle, just before he wrought another monumental decision on the fate of the city, or his family, or on one of their lives. But between them, in the quiet hours, they had stopped saying his name. Stopped wondering why outloud.

It had been years since Aveline had a conversation like this.

Bethany ground her molars together, as though corralling her words into line. So Aveline did the only polite thing, and said, “Merrill went back there to talk to their leader. She ended up possessed by a demon. We ended it, and the rest of them didn’t take it well.”

“Didn’t take it well? Didn’t-- _Aveline_.” She stood up, crossing to the fire.

“In defense,” Aveline told her. “Nothing to be done about it. But then Merrill’s people were angry.”

She couldn’t read Bethany as she faced the fire, back to her. “Of course they were.” She sounded tired. “Their Keeper was killed.”

Bethany had paused before the last word, chosen a more neutral one. “We tried,” Aveline said, but it sounded hollow. And Bethany straightened.

“You were there.”

She nodded, and then realized she had to speak. “I was.”

“And what did you do,” Bethany asked, voice curiously even, “when faced with forty Dalish seeking justice?”

“I told Hawke to talk to them.” Aveline didn’t falter. It was only the truth. “He’s not good at that. And then I defended myself to keep from dying. That’s all.”

Bethany bit out, “You should have been court-martialed.”

“Hawke was champion of Kirkwall.”

“You’re captain of the guard,” she said. “You protect them at any cost.”

“Enough.” Aveline hadn’t moved since she leaned forward. She tilted her head up, and the sharpness of the word made Bethany turn. “Wasn’t your life in the pale. Not your judgment to make. Wardens not teach you that, yet?”

“I’ve learned plenty,” Bethany muttered, “and I haven’t murdered innocent people.”

It didn’t spark any anger in Aveline. Instead, she sighed. “When innocent people try to murder you,” she said, “let me know what you do.”

The fire crackled in the hearth. Aveline waited, because it was what she knew how to do. In the flickering light of the fire, the fringe of her dark hair looked soft as feathers. They moved ever so slightly when a draft stole in under the door.

Bethany said, finally, “I didn’t read any of his letters.” The admission made no sense. But before Aveline could open her mouth, she went on. “He didn’t write often. Just sometimes. But Wardens--you can’t have a shadow on your back.”

“Family’s a shadow?” asked Aveline, a little dryly.

“He was,” she said. “The Wardens tell you to sever your connections. Easier in the long run. He wanted time, attention, love.”

He wanted them completely, Aveline thought. They were the kind of things you gave freely when they weren’t demanded of you.

“Varric realized it,” she continued, “and sent word when my mother passed.”

Bethany mapped unintelligible routes in her choice of phrasing, and Aveline could not follow. Leandra had been murdered in cold blood, mutilated for a man’s ambition. She witnessed it. Poison to dwell on it still. No justice, no recourse but death for death. But this was given the kindest word of all.

More silence.

“Would you show me her room?” Bethany asked.

It wasn’t far. Aveline held open the library door for her, walked her up the stairs. Leandra’s little suite was off to the side of the champion’s, sealed for years. Bethany waved her hand and unlocked the door without a word.

Aveline stepped back, not wanting to even look inside. A tomb was a tomb, no matter how empty. When Bethany entered the room, she slammed the door behind her. As though to warn the memories to keep their distance. As though to pull up a shield against the ghosts of the dead, and of the living.

~~~

Aveline sat down on the plush carpet, leaned back against the railing. Fellow tottered up from the library to explore the landing, stationing himself at the head of the stairs. Bethany emerged eventually, dry-eyed and running her fingers through her short hair. She turned and waved her hands once more. Blue sparks, like grains of diamond, twined around the threshold, and faded. Better than rolling a stone in front of it.

She knew better than to ask if she was alright, but she heaved herself to her feet. “It’ll be dawn soon,” she said instead.

Bethany nodded. “Is there a bed here somewhere that didn’t belong to anyone?” she asked. “If not, I can--”

“It’ll be covered in dust,” Aveline said. “I’ve slept worse.”

When they turn to venture down the hall, Bethany said, “Dead hill giant.”

Aveline glanced over her shoulder.

“Dead hill giant,” repeated Bethany. “Where I’ve slept worse. A family of them wandered up into the Frostbacks, and we were very cold.”

Aveline considered it. “Pig sty,” she said. “Doesn’t hold a candle, but.”

“Less entrails.” Then she paused. “More expulsion.”

A chuckle bubbled in the back of Aveline’s throat.

The Amell Manor, for all its size, was mostly space between the heads of the people in it and the ceiling. Wealth was just a matter of how much emptiness you had to wallow around in. A sow, rich in mud, a noble, rich in arched ceilings. Cobwebs dangled from the rafters. Fact of the matter was, there was only a single useable guest room.

“I’ll take the library,” said Aveline immediately. Bethany attempted to tug the heavy cover off the bed with a listless beat of her elbows.

“Aveline,” Bethany said, “the bed is wide enough.”

Her tone brokered no argument, and Aveline, in her long day’s weariness, couldn’t manage a reason why not. So after they tossed the dustcover to the floor, and Bethany removed some of the trappings of her Warden’s uniform, and both had pulled off their shoes, they stood at the sides of the bed.

“After you,” said Aveline, finally.

Bethany looked as though she wanted to argue, but slid between the covers instead. Aveline followed. They were near shoulder to shoulder. Old beds were always so small. It smelled of mildew.

They looked up at the eaves of the canopy above them. Four tall posts ballasted each corner of the bed, with velvet curtains tied tightly up against each one. The moon shone in from the window.

Bethany suddenly sat up so swiftly Aveline thought a rat might be shuffling around at the end of the bed. But she only leaned forward to untie the curtains of the canopy. The drapes fell heavy and dark around them. She didn’t ask for Aveline’s help, but leaned across her once to untie the knot at the post closest to Aveline’s head. The linen of her shirt rucked up a little in the effort--when Aveline spotted a freckle in the cup of her hip, she closed her eyes, and waited for it to pass.

When she opened them, the darkness cocooned them as though they were carried in a pair of hands. It intensified the smell considerably. Bethany lay down again next to her, her small, pointed shoulder shoved into the meat of Aveline’s upper arm.

It was so dark Aveline nearly invited her to cast one of those mage-lights again, but didn’t. Bethany was nowhere near sleep. She meant to talk more, and only could do it in the dark. Aveline despised superstition--never understood the comfort of it. The notion of how certain things could only be spoken under the cover of night, or that you wouldn’t die on a clear day. Nothing to be gained but disappointed.

Bethany obviously put great stock in it. She cleared her throat with a quiet cough. “Aveline?”

She grunted in response.

“Why didn’t you leave?” asked Bethany, turning on her side, blanket falling off her shoulder.

Aveline blinked. “I made a promise,” she told her. “I don’t give in on promises.” Bethany made a frustrated sound, but before she could speak, Aveline decided she had more to say. “A broken plate’s never whole again. It works, but it’s just easier to shatter.”

“It’s not a plate,” Bethany said plainly. “It’s people’s lives.”

“I gave my word to your family.” Aveline’s voice rasped sharper than she wanted. “And that’s the only I thing I have in the whole world. I don’t cheapen it by giving it and taking it back. Not how it works.”

She could feel Bethany’s curious eyes examining the outline of her face. She kept her eyes trained on the dark above them. The words were true. Aveline’s father had connections to nobility, but they were long gone. Like swathes of others kicking around Thedas, she had no land, no family. Nothing but her own hands. What they did was her business. Their allegiance, their service--her choice.

The touch of a thumb, cotton-tender, against her jaw. She froze, hands planted flat against the bed. It traced a thick scar Aveline forgot was there most days--only, really, when she washed her face in the basin, and her But then it was only a flicker of--a broad, bright foyer, blood, gnashing teeth. It traveled her face from chin to ear like a clumsy brushstroke.

Like all Bethany’s touches, it merely asked a question.

“Arishok,” said Aveline. Her voice never wavered. “Long dead.” She attempted to summon more words and failed. She reached up instead and took Bethany’s wrist, meaning to pull her hand away. But her arm took on the weight of stone once she grasped it in her fingers--the tendons just below the heel of the palm were delicate on every person, even soldiers, and Aveline’s body never knew what to do with softness.

“Why didn’t you leave?” Bethany asked again, her voice strange and quiet.

“It’s just a scar,” said Aveline.

“Him,” she emphasized. Her thumb still brushed against her cheek. “Him.”

“You're all why I'm here.” Aveline’s tone, plain and brisk and losing its patience. “Instead of a bloating corpse tucked into a Fereldan hillside."

She made a frustrated sound. “But didn’t you question--”

Aveline’s other hand balled into a fist against the covers. “At every turn,” she said. “With every breath. Stop, Hawke. Think for a second. Is this what you want?” She took a breath. “The only thing your brother never needed help with was making a decision.”

She must know that, Aveline thought, and the long silence confirmed it.

“This city is dead,” said Bethany. “Because of him.”

“He did it for you,” Aveline said.

Bethany froze as though Aveline had balled up her fist and given her a sound blow to the stomach. Perhaps she had. She tried to pull her hand away, once, but Aveline didn’t let go.

If this was what she had come for, she couldn’t leave without it.

“He didn’t give a damn about the state of the mages here,” Aveline continued, “until the Wardens took you. You know he didn’t. He wanted to keep you safe, and that was all. But then you left.” She cleared her throat. “And then he saw you everywhere. In every Tranquil girl hawking wares outside the Gallows. In every puddle. In every corpse.”

“Bullshit.” The word was bright with anger. “I wasn’t taken by the Circle.”

“You could have been stolen by fairies, for all it mattered,” Aveline said. “He loved you.”

The silence wound itself into knots above their heads.

“Loves,” she corrected herself. That, too, was the truth.

~~~

They spoke no more, after that, and Aveline fell asleep with a dead man’s commitment. The matress, long gone lumpy, was still a better bed than anything she’d had in months. In the morning, she woke to find herself the only person still in bed. The curtains had been tied up again in their usual places. She saw Fellow in the hall, waiting at the stairs, tail wagging like a demon.

Her hand rested on the pillow, empty.

Aveline swung her legs over the side of the bed and pulled on her boots before venturing out onto the landing. The door to Hawke’s suite was flung wide open. Bethany sat in the center of the room, surrounded by papers, books rifled through and tossed aside. She paged through a journal, familiar and leatherbound.

A map, unrolled at her knees. An inkwell at her side, a quill in her hand. Droplets of black on the carpet. She considered something in the journal once more, and then made a mark above the Vimmark Mountains.

It occurred to Aveline, with all the sudden force of a shield to the chestplate, there was nothing Bethany did not know before stepping through the threshold. _Varric realized it_ \--her voice echoed back to her from the night before. Every ounce of expressed frustration at why choices were made, and not their consequences. How daft Aveline was not to notice. How bloody _stupid._

“Good morning,” she said pleasantly from the floor, brow furrowed as she turned a page.

“You mean to find him,” Aveline said, dazed.

Bethany said nothing. After all, if it was never written, never given voice, never left its home inside her mouth, it could never be proven.

“You mean to bring him back.” She continued speaking, uselessly, as though it would mean something in this little room. Seagulls squawked outside in their morning flight. “Or you don’t.”

Bethany snapped the journal shut with little decorum, sliding it inside her pack. She leaned over the map, gently blowing at the ink until she was sure it was dry, before rolling it up securely. A few papers went with her. Aveline found herself on the floor, helping her right the mess before she knew what she was doing. Her hands acted on her behalf.

Holding a heavy sheaf of parchment, she offered it to Bethany, who turned to take it from her. Her eyes dropped to the page. It was the deed for the manor, as far as Aveline could guess. It was two inches thick. Nobles and their space.

Bethany reached out and folded her hands around Aveline’s, and the world outside the two of them went all too quiet.

“If you stay here,” she whispered, “stay for yourself, for what you want to spend your life doing.”

“I am,” Aveline answered instantly. Her mouth was dry.

Bethany’s shoulders trembled once--with what, Aveline couldn’t say. But she wanted to reach out, still them, find what made her shake. “Make sure of it,” she said. “I mean it, Aveline.”

She couldn’t think of anything else to say. “I know.”

“There will never be Hawkes in Kirkwall again,” Bethany told her, a eulogy in a handful of words. “A blessing, I think, but Maker knows.”

“Varric will never run out of drivel to write about, doubtless,” Aveline said wryly, and Bethany laughed a little.

Then she fell silent, mustering some strength Aveline couldn’t touch or see. Her hands gripped hers, suddenly, full of a familiar conviction.

“We should be worthy again,” Bethany murmured. “I’ll do it, or die trying.”

She opened her mouth to say _no need_ , but the words died in her throat, a silent rebellion.

“Of you, Aveline,” said Bethany, “of this.” And she leaned forward to press her lips against the scar marking Aveline’s face. Her lips were chapped from wind and sun, and gentle enough to break stone.

She took the deed from her hands, then, and locked it all away. Aveline stayed on her knees, watching her move. Bethany slung her pack over her shoulder, and paused at the threshold to the door.

“Sundermount,” she said once, with small faith, and left.

Aveline didn’t know how long she sat there on the floor after Bethany was gone. There was the sound of the great front door clanging shut. Fellow came and sat by her side, slobbering on her thigh.

She stood, eventually, and found her way back to the library. All her armor lay there--her sword and shield, each piece of herself from the night before. Just as she left it. The fire, long gone out. She pulled it on, bit by bit, till she was herself again.

When Aveline left the manor, Fellow trailed at her back, and one of her guards jogged up to meet her as she left the threshold. His armor clanged with step on the cobbles.

“Viscount wants a word with you,” he said, after bracing his fist against his chest. “Intrigue, or treason, or--something. Sounded right urgent, Captain.”

Aveline paused. In the distance lay the mountain. It stood black against the light, as it always did. The sun, only halfway risen, dawned the early dark all in an orange-red paint, hazy with fog.

“Captain?” the guard inquired, a little hesitant.

Aveline unbuckled her shield from her back and pressed it into his hands. “For him,” she said, and turned north, and walked into shadow.


End file.
